Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes

Fascism, Nazism, Communism

Edited by Paul Corner

The first ever single-volume in-depth study of popular reactions to totalitarian rule, with contributions from a team of internationally acknowledged experts in their fields

Covers not only the Soviet Union, fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, but also the post-Second World War communist regimes in East Germany and Poland

Moves beyond a focus on traditional themes of consent and coercion to construct a more nuanced picture of everyday life in the various regimes

Encourages comparisons between the different regimes, providing many new insights into the way these regimes functioned and the reasons for their decline

Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes

Fascism, Nazism, Communism

Edited by Paul Corner

Description

Fascism, Nazism, and Communism dominated the history of much of the twentieth century, yet comparatively little attention has focused on popular reactions to the regimes that sprang from these ideologies. Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes is the first volume to investigate popular reactions to totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the communist regimes in Poland and East Germany after 1945.

The contributions, written by internationally acknowledged experts in their fields, move beyond the rather static vision provided by traditional themes of consent and coercion to construct a more nuanced picture of everyday life in the various regimes. The book provides many new insights into the ways totalitarian regimes functioned and the reasons for their decline, encouraging comparisons between the different regimes and stimulating re-evaluation of long-established positions.

Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes

Fascism, Nazism, Communism

Edited by Paul Corner

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors1. Introducton, Paul CornerPart I: Two Overview 2. Popular Opinion in Russia under Prewar Stalinism, Sheila Fitzpatrick3. Consensus, Coercion and Popular Opinion in the Third Reich: Some Reflections, Ian KershawPart II: The First Dictatorshipe 4. Liberation from Autonomy: Mapping Self-understandings in Stalin's Time, Jochen Hellbeck5. Beyond Binaries: Popular Opinion in Stalinism, Jan Plamper6. Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany as a Factor in the Policy of the 'Solution of the Jewish Question': The Nuremberg Laws and the Reichskristallnacht, Otto Dov Kulka7. Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany: Mobilisation, Experience, Perceptions. The View from the Wurttemberg Countryside, Jill Stephenson8. Fascist Italy in the 1930s: Popular Opinion in the Provinces, Paul CornerPart III: Dictatorship After 1945 9. Poland: The Silence of Those Deprived of Voice., Marcin Kula10. Consent in the Communist GDR or How to Interpret Lion Feuchtwanger's Blindness in Moscow 1937, Martin Sabrow11. Demography, Opportunity, or Ideological Conversion? Reflections on the role of the 'second Hitler Youth generation', or '1929ers', in the GDR, Mary Fulbrook12. Tacit Minimal Consensus: the Always Precarious East German Dictatorship, Thomas LindenbergerSelect BibliographyIndex of Names

Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes

Fascism, Nazism, Communism

Edited by Paul Corner

Author Information

Paul Corner is Professor of European History at the University of Siena, having previously been a Research Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and Reader in Italian History at the University of Reading. His main interests are in Italian Fascism and the relationship between Fascism and other European dictatorial regimes both before and after the Second World War.